Leap of Faith
by KeianaLunae
Summary: It had taken all of five minutes to go from lunchtime to a full-scale firefight. It had only taken ten seconds for Lorne to come up with his crazy, bad, stupid, no-good, insane plan… and to implement it, armed with nothing but Ronon's gun, some alien grenades, and far too much time spent in Sheppard's clearly corrupting presence. [Action, Whump] [Lorne, Sheppard, Beckett, McKay]
1. Surprise

_Lorne is kicking ass and taking names, but he's a bit too busy to stop and write any of them down. I hereby bring you my 5th SGA fic, containing copious amounts of Lorne action and the inevitably associated LorneWhump! And don't worry, I love Lorne too much to ever kill him. For good. Also a teensy bit of ShepWhump and McKayWhump, a good dose of outright RononWhump, as well as a smidgen of ShepAngst. Takes place a fair time after the events of S05E10/E11 (First Contact / The Lost Tribe), so quite possibly set post-show._

 _Lots of shooting and exploding and running and a touch of language, so I went with a T rating. Part 1 of 13, to be published (optimistically) daily over the next 2 weeks. Many thanks (and apologies) to my awesomesauce beta, Redtail53, who proofed the original version of the story for me. Then, as usual, I let myself be dragged back into the story and made it ... more. Any mistakes are thus my fault, as they were likely incurred during the post-beta explosion. Enjoy!_

* * *

Where the hell had they come from?

Lorne ducked back down behind the low wall that ran along the edge of the control room steps to avoid an energy pulse fired his way.

What the hell did they want?

The energy blast slammed and crackled out against the wall behind him. Their rate of fire wasn't particularly fast, so he had a small window of opportunity; He popped up and fired back. His bullets seemed to simply ping off the armoured shell of the humanoid alien hostile who was firing at him. Its arm twitched, and he ducked down again as another beam of fire sizzled past his head, this time shattering the large stained glass window behind him with an ear-popping thud-crack-sizzle. Instinctively Lorne twisted his body and face away from the exploding shards.

They had simply appeared out of nowhere.

One minute he'd been having lunch in the mess; the next the city was on full alert and he'd been summoned to the control room along with Sheppard. Glass pieces rained down all around him, and when they stopped he twisted to look back and make sure that nobody had been hurt by the flying shards. A small fighter buzzed past the balcony outside, releasing a volley of fire at some unknown target.

In the control room behind him, Lorne hears Sheppard yell at the technician on duty about the jumpers, but when Lorne spares a moment to glance their way he only sees the technician shaking his head. Seems there's no air support available. Lorne can't hear the response, but it doesn't matter. If he needed to know, Sheppard would broadcast it on the military channel. He returns his attention to firing at the armed figures that are attempting to breach the gate room on the far side.

~o~o~o~

The invading force had flickered into existence in the atmosphere, just beyond the city shield. The only advance warning they'd had was a weird pulse that had looked like a warped version of a hyperspace signature. The pulse had been noticed by alert eyes, and the technician on duty had erred on the side of caution; he had triggered the battle stations alarm and had immediately raised the city shield. Nearly simultaneously a moderately sized spacecraft about a third of the length of the Daedalus had shimmered into existence.

It had slid right through the city shield as though it didn't exist.

The enemy vessel had pulled into one of the gaps between the piers, hovering just above the water, pulling in as close to the base of the central city cluster as it could reach. By the time Lorne had run into the control room, sensors had indicated that the alien ship had breached the city structure at several points. Lorne had popped out onto the control room balcony for a quick visual. The ship was mostly visible through a gap between the buildings.

It was elongated, shaped somewhat like the old Earth space shuttles but with a more rounded body and less 'wings', and sported a shimmery grey colour with the occasional red panelling and green lights. Lorne popped back inside and reported to Sheppard that several umbilicals had been deployed. They're boarding Atlantis. Sheppard had immediately deployed the on-duty ground forces to engage, had initiated a security lockdown for all civilian personnel, and had alerted all off-duty military forces to muster for combat.

The intruders had clearly known how to work the transporters, because seconds later radio reports had started coming in that several groups of intruders had been spotted in various locations throughout the city, and there were multiple civilians down in labs and corridors. Not everyone had made it to a lockdown zone yet, what with the security alert only going online less than four minutes before. Sheppard orders the citywide life signs detector to be engaged, but they had barely looked at it when the assault on the control room had begun.

Lorne had immediately taken up a defensive position by the main steps, grateful that he'd already been in full gear, P90 included, in preparation for an off-world mission set to leave right after lunch. There don't appear to be too many of the intruders in the group attempting to take the control room, but they're all wearing heavy suits of armour and are equipped with an array of energy weapons that appear to be set to a very heavy stun with a nasty punch.

The alien ship had immediately launched a half dozen small fighters units which were currently attacking the city in seemingly random fashion. They buzzed around the buildings in pairs, two dogging the spire like flies, darting back and forth, changing direction repeatedly, and firing haphazardly. Two soldiers had taken up position on the balcony and were attempting to take them down with small arms fire but had little success so far.

Sheppard had slid down the rear stairwell as Ronon, who had followed them up from the Mess Hall when the first alarm sounded, covered him as he retrieved a weapon from one of the first security team personnel to go down. He had made his way up the stairs again and was holding position in the control room near the bridge from where he could both shoot and issue orders because there was no way in hell Sheppard would leave the fighting to everyone else while he sat around chattering on the radio.

Five minutes was all it had taken to go from lunch to a full-scale firefight in Atlantis.


	2. Resistance

_Previously: And you thought lunch today was going to be boring? Surprise! Have an alien invasion.  
Ready? FIGHT!  
_

 _(To make up for the short tease that was Chapter 1, I proudly give you the longest chapter in the entire story!)_

* * *

The power in the control room stutters and the gate room lights flicker. A technician, hunched behind her console, yells that more power conduits have been severed. Another reports that the gate is offline. Lorne briefly glances to his left to where he can see Sheppard firing out the back door of the control room while Ronon covers the stairwells and bridge to Woolsey's office.

Ronon's position also gives him a good angle to the far side of the gate room, and occasionally he turns to fire off in that direction whenever an enemy soldier makes it past the security team covering that side of the room. Lorne's position only gives him a clear line of sight to the doorways closest to the gate, but his job is to hold the main stairs to prevent anyone from getting up into the control room from the gate room floor. The far doorways are clear for the moment, so Lorne turns his attention back to Sheppard in the control room for a status update.

He's just in time to see a flashing, round object fly through the railing near the bridge. It bounces between Sheppard and Ronon and rolls underneath the first row of consoles. Lorne's gut turns to ice. It's a grenade. He yells as much at them. The console technicians scatter. Ronon takes two massive strides forward, grabs Chuck, and swings him towards Sheppard near the back of the room. There's a crackle of energy and a flash of bright white light.

There's nothing more he can do than the warning he has already given, so Lorne ducks down and looks away as the flash expands, followed by a loud bang and a mild concussive wave laced with more crackling electricity.

When the flash and noise subside, Lorne first checks the area he's covering to make sure no enemy forces have tried to move in during the distraction. It's clear, and he turns his attention back to the control room behind him, popping up from where he had taken cover behind the pillar next to the last two steps leading up to the control room.

The energy pulse grenade, as Lorne immediately names it, has wreaked havoc in the control room but far less than he had expected. A normal grenade in that proximity would have ripped the entire room and its occupants to shreds, but it's mostly intact. Mostly. The technicians who scrambled away appear to just be stunned, on par with a rather vicious flashbang. His eyes sweep over them, relieved to see them moving and not bleeding. The back row of consoles are structurally intact but are offline. Lorne shifts his attention further into the room, to the cloud of smoke surrounding the two primary consoles which appear to have been most severely damaged by the blast. Chuck's console is a barely recognisable shattered mess of crystals and wiring.

As the smoke from the gate control console dissipates it becomes clear that Ronon is down. He's lying on his right side just short of the bridge, impaled by what appears to be an ancient console control crystal sticking out of his left hip, and a long shard of metallic debris from the console protruding from his left thigh. The alien grenade has had a physical casualty after all, besides the equipment.

Beyond him, Sheppard is hauling himself and Chuck back to their feet. They're both a little singed but seem to be okay. Sheppard has multiple small cuts and abrasions, having caught and covered Chuck when the console blew. Chuck appears to be a little stunned but unharmed. Movement in the periphery of Lorne's vision catches his attention, and he swings back to his sector just in time to see the culprit of the grenade toss striding up to the landing on the main staircase.

He's holding an entire belt of the spherical energy pulse grenades in one hand. Lorne drops to one knee, braces on the low wall, and releases a targeted spray of P90 fire at the figure's faceplate which is conveniently located right in front of him. The figure, clearly not expecting Lorne to be there, or perhaps not up and moving, jerks its head up and stops short in surprise at the hail of bullets. This close up Lorne can see that the suit has a flexible neck section, and, without even thinking about it he directs his second burst of fire right at it, emptying his P90 mag. Lorne is rewarded when, under the targeted onslaught, the neck panels give way, and his bullets rip into the suit's occupant.

The armoured figure reels backwards as their neck is shredded by the P90 fire, flailing wildly as they tumble down the stairs. The gun and grenade belt follow the dying suit down. Lorne is rarely surprised, but the unexpected success takes a few seconds to process as he watches his enemy go down.

It's dead by the time it stops rolling.

Lorne eyes the dead alien suit for a few more seconds while he reloads by feel alone. You can never be too sure that something is actually dead in the Pegasus galaxy. The pool of blood that has seeped out by the time he's done is reassuring, so Lorne tunes himself back into the firefight that has resumed around him.

~o~o~o~

At some point during Lorne's encounter, Ronon had come to, grabbed his pulse magnum and, undeterred by the shards of Ancient infrastructure sticking out of his body, dragged himself closer to the nearest column before resuming fire at the intruders. From his prone position near the railing of the control room level, he manages to land a few good hits on targets across the room. His gun is able to punch through their armour better than standard projectile weapons do, and it only takes three to four repeat hits to puncture through and take them down. Some of the marines down in the room had switched to stunners in an attempt at better results, but the energy waves seem to just dissipate over their armour. It takes 8 to 10 direct full hits before one of them even wavers.

Lorne, noticing that Ronon is back in the game, yells the news about the weak spot in the neck joint in his general direction as he takes up firing. Sheppard overhears, and climbs on the comms immediately, ordering all units to shoot for the neck and or, if the neck was not possible, for the knees; a quick glance at a nearby alien had revealed the knee joints were also flexible to ensure suit mobility. Once the target was down, they were to move in close and confirm the kill if possible. The marines immediately toss their wraith stunners and switch back to regular projectile weapons.

With Ronon joining the fray and the Lanteans targeting their fire, the Lantean forces begin to inflict serious damage; the enemy invaders incur heavy losses. In less than two minutes there are bodies littering the gate room floor and into the corridors beyond. Sheppard manages to seal the rear door to the control room to cut off that access point. Lorne shifts up and backwards, to the doorway of the balcony from where he can still cover the main staircase if necessary but can also cover the control room bridge and stairs, as well as check on his guys out on the balcony.

Sheppard sees him move up, and slings his weapon over his shoulder, trusting Lorne to warn him if anybody comes their way. The remaining members of the security teams down in the gate room begin to push outwards, and Lorne signals the two guys on the conference room balcony to move down for backup when the expanding units report success at repelling the enemy forces. Sheppard directs them to pursue with caution and turns back to the mess that is the control room, helping the technicians back to their feet and assessing the systems. He's on the radio constantly, giving orders and receiving status updates.

Chuck has just taken a seat at the secondary console and is attempting to power it up again when the security teams begin to report that the few remaining enemy forces in the tower have begun to retreat back to the transporters. In a matter of moments, the fight for the control room is over.

Lorne takes a deep breath and lowers his weapon, trying to calm the adrenaline racing through his system, but jerks it up again when one of the two marines stationed on the balcony to his right yells triumphantly. They're still taking potshots at the circling fighters and have managed to take one down. He hollers at them to keep firing, and the rat-tat-tat of their weapons resumes immediately.

The control room is momentarily silent as everyone takes a few breaths and pulls themselves together, but it doesn't last long. They've barely had a chance to regroup when Dr Kusanagi radios in from the physics lab in a panic. Dr McKay had been taken, stunned and dragged off down a corridor by one of the intruders almost immediately after the attack had begun. Her radio had been at her workstation across the room when she had taken cover, hence the delay in reporting the news. At her radio call the channel springs to life with reports from multiple labs; a whole slew of scientist had been grabbed and dragged off. The rest had hidden away.

The response teams throughout the city react quickly to Sheppard's commands when they realise that their geeks are being kidnapped.

It's a violation of Atlantis' first rule: Protect the Geeks.

In short order, the reports come through that several of the scientists have been rescued from their captors using sheer force and overwhelming numbers, combined now with targeted firing information. A lot of knees have been blown out in the process of forcing the invaders to drop their precious cargo without shooting said cargo. The last few invaders are retreating with haste, trying to leave; They're attempting to make a run with whatever they've managed to get. Sheppard demands confirmation over the radio of scientists still being held by the enemy and initiates an immediate headcount of all Atlantis personnel across the citywide channels. It's a standard drill, one that Sheppard makes everyone in the city practice at least once a week.

It's a quick investigation; people check themselves and those around them in via PDAs, tablets and desktop computers, while the rest are count by the teams on the ground. The census number shoots up, then crawls as the last few strays check-in. Eventually, it stops; they've managed to retrieve all but three scientists. The exfil is still being pursued. First one, then another scientist are retrieved by the marines. The second was simply abandoned by the enemy in their desperate attempt to escape alive. Sheppard and Chuck are still trying to get some of the control room systems back up. One of the technicians is attending to Ronon, or at least attempting to. Another is retrieving undamaged crystals from the floor and handing them off to a third who is retasking a secondary console for primary systems.

Lorne keeps one eye on his guys on the balcony, still firing at the drones, and the other on the entrances to the gate room. He's the only one on watch for the entire area, so he can't do anything else right now. Sheppard has the situation well in hand, so Lorne waits and watches.

The radio crackles, and a breathless and frustrated voice informs them that the last of the invaders had managed to make it back to their ship and had sealed off the entryways. The marines can't get through. There are strange noises and unusual vibrations coming through the closed hatches. It doesn't take a genius to do the mental math.

They still have one of the scientists.

They still have McKay.


	3. Insanity

_Previously: What, you thought we weren't going to fight back? Also, we *can* count, you bastards.  
Now: Lorne has a very bad idea._

* * *

Lorne doesn't think.

He just moves, running out onto the control room balcony and risking a glance over the edge between volleys by the marines stationed there. A second craft streaks past and the combined firepower of the two soldiers rip into it, causing it to spiral out of control before smacking into the side of a distant tower in a ball of fire.. but Lorne isn't paying attention to that. There's a small line of sight through the neighbouring cluster of towers, but it's enough for Lorne to see the alien ship disengage from the city. The umbilicals retract rapidly and the ship slowly begins to swing itself around.

They're trying to leave.

All along the nearer edges of the piers are the flashes of small arms fire as the security teams open fire on the hull of the alien vessel. It doesn't seem to be having any effect, but that doesn't stop them from trying. The ship powers up its engines and is slowly drifting along just above the surface of the ocean, taking cover from the pier on one side of it as they attempt their escape. They're still busy swinging around as they go. Their trajectory is straightforward and pretty slow for the moment as the engines are just starting to fire up.

Behind him, Sheppard yells something over the radio about heading for the chair to use drones before they can get away, but pounding footsteps draw Lorne's attention back to the control room. He pops back inside just as Dr Zelenka sprints up the control room stairs with the news that all power control systems to the chair are down. They don't have drones - hell, they don't even have the shield at that moment until some crystals are replaced and some conduits repaired.

Lorne glances down into the gate room and sees the alien grenade belt lying on the ground next to the one he had tagged in the neck. A second glance out towards the balcony where he's just watched the alien ship detach has a crazy, stupid, insane, ridiculous, very bad idea pop into his head.

He's been spending too much time with Sheppard.

He's going to need something to punch through the hull.

Lorne doesn't think twice. He sprints down the stairs while yelling at Ronon, who doesn't hesitate or ask questions; he simply tosses his gun through the railing down to Lorne who catches it in mid-air as he hits the gate room floor. Particle Magnum in one hand, Lorne ditches his P90 to scoop up the grenade belt as he hops over the dead alien before making a beeline for the nearest transporter. Sheppard watches him go. He doesn't ask questions; doesn't try to stop his XO. Sheppard can put two and two together.

He knows Lorne is going after the departing ship.

Lorne is going after McKay.

Sheppard yells at Radek to get working on the jumper bay doors - they're going to need them open and soon. As Lorne pops into the transporter he hears Sheppard's voice in his earpiece, ordering all forces to prepare to cease firing on the departing ship on his command. A few seconds later Sheppard hails him, yelling out a distance and a speed value momentarily interrupted by the flash of the transporter. As the doors slide open he processes the information and registers that Sheppard must have taken a position on the balcony to spot for him.

Lorne pops out of the transporter at the far end of the pier, vaults the railing to the deck below and sets off at a dead run, angling for the far edge of the platform. Sheppard's voice is in his ear; all other radio chatter gone; guiding him with distance estimates and a course correction. Lorne adjusts to follow Sheppard's lead without breaking his stride. As he closes on the edge of the pier overhang beneath which the ship is going to pass, Sheppard orders the ceasefire.

Lorne doesn't stop. He doesn't flinch. He has Ronon's gun shoved deep into his vest, to avoid losing it, and the grenade belt is wrapped around his other arm, leaving both his hands free to help him grapple onto the ship upon landing.

Lorne runs out of floor.

He jumps.


	4. Leap

_Previously: Lorne goes momentarily insane, abandons his post, appropriates Ronon's weapon, and practices his hurdles and long jump off the edge of a pier.  
Now: Lorne attempts to trainsurf without losing Ronon's gun. ___Minus the train.  
__

* * *

Lorne flings himself off the edge of the pier overhang and arcs down - right onto the upper rear hull of the alien ship as it passes by below him. The impact is hard, but Lorne twists and rolls into it, grappling at whatever protrusion he can find to anchor himself. A few panic-inducing seconds of nothing but smooth metal give way to some grooves, and Lorne is able to get a hand into one of them to stop his slide back down the side of the ship.

The wind has been mostly knocked out of him, and now that he's no longer in danger of falling right off the alien ship he can spare five seconds to get his breath back. After recovering and getting his balance and bearings, Lorne hauls himself to his feet and sets off towards the back of the ship, near where he can see the engine nacelles flaring brightly. The ship's speed is steadily increasing, and he has to keep low to maintain his balance against the movement and the wind, but it doesn't take long to reach his target.

There's a smoothly curved section that is close enough to the engines to hopefully cause some damage, but far enough away that he can hope there's an open space underneath the plating he's about to shoot at. The deeper into the ship the grenades go, the better. An internal explosion to just disrupt the engines - that's what he's hoping for. Too much boom and the whole ship could go up. He really doesn't want to kill McKay, despite his regular muttered threats to do exactly that.

Using Ronon's gun set on max power, he begins plugging a hole through the hull just forward of one of the thrusters, which is steadily spinning up and growing brighter as the ship accelerates away from the city. Now that they're clear of the pier the ship begins to arc upwards, gaining altitude slowly. They're outside the city shield range, over the open ocean. Lorne knows he doesn't have long before they jump to hyperspace. They appeared out of nowhere in atmo and were on the city before anybody could blink or raise the shield. If they jump to FTL now, Lorne will probably die instantly, unprotected on the exterior surface of the ship. And McKay... He'll be gone, probably forever.

A few more shots and the hole he's been chipping away at punches through the hull with a noticeable hiss of escaping gas and smoke. The gap is just large enough to fit the grenades through. He eyes the grenade belt, noting that two of them are blue like the one in the control room was, while the other three are black and red. Taking a chance on the red ones, he shoves Ronon's gun back into his vest while he scrutinises the grenade mechanism to work out how to activate it. There's no button of any sort on the exterior, just the coloured panels, some thread patterning for grip and a deep groove running all around the middle of the object, almost like two halves of... On impulse, he twists the top half of the sphere. The coloured panels start to blink red, and almost immediately a soft beeping follows. The beeping and the flashing lights start to speed up.

Not knowing how long he has until it goes solid, he quickly twist-activates the last two red grenades on the belt, and because he can, he activates one of the blue ones as well. If the red ones don't make the bang he's expecting... well he can only hope that the blue one could at the very least short out some of the ship's circuits or engines with its massive energy pulse.

Lorne promptly shoves the entire belt of vigorously flashing and beeping grenades into the ship's interior through the hole and sprints away towards the front of the ship to get clear of the blast. He has no idea how much of the explosive force will punch outwards, or how big the blast will be. The city is receding behind him at a rapid pace now, almost a mile away already. Hopefully, three and one wasn't overkill.

He definitely needs to spend less time with Sheppard. He used to be responsible and reliable before… well, he's still responsible and reliable. He used to be sane, though. Lorne is about thirty meters clear of the breach point when the first grenade blows, and the rest go with it.

The ship shudders beneath him as a thunderous rumble passes through it before the entire section of the hull where Lorne had breached erupts outwards in a massive jet of fire. Lorne has to throw himself down and grip onto an edge to avoid being flung off the craft. Just behind him, the engines sputter, flicker and then dim rapidly before both entire nacelles explode outwards. The ship begins to slow and drops towards the ocean below it.

They're going down.

They're going in.

Lorne doesn't blink. He shoves Ronon's gun deeper down from where it had tried to climb out of his tac vest, spins around, rights himself, eyeballs the ship's descent speed and the height to the ocean below and, as the ship nears splashdown, pops up and sprints back towards the gap between the two smoking engine pods. If he survives, he knows that Ronon will kill him if he loses the gun. His vector takes him back past the gaping hole he caused, and there's a fleeting moment of satisfaction at the success of destruction well done. He wraps his arms over his chest, one hand ready to cover his mouth and nose while simultaneously holding the Pulse Magnum tightly trapped in his vest. The ship careens downwards, and the ocean draws closer.

He runs out of hull.

Lorne jumps again.


	5. Swim

_Previously: Lorne jumps, Lorne shoots, Lorne scores! (And by score, we mean making a giant hole in the side of a spaceship, and then jumping off .)  
Now: It's dangerous to go alone. Lorne does it anyway._

* * *

The water is cold, and it knocks his breath away almost as hard as the physical impact of the water does.

It was a textbook water entry, feet first, but nobody warns you about how hard water is when you're moving at that speed or jumping from that crazy height. He may as well have landed on concrete. Concrete would have been warmer, at least. Pain lances through his left leg, but between the force of the impact, the need to breathe, and the freezing cold water, Lorne isn't too concerned about the pain. He has to surface.

Up. He has to go up. He has to breathe!

Damn it's cold.

Lorne kicks hard, ignoring the pain that stabs through his left foot and leg as he tries to make use of them. He strokes up with one arm, keeping the other across his vest to hold Ronon's gun in place. The pain doesn't subside despite the cold water and his leg is on fire with each kick, but he pushes onwards towards the shimmer not far above him. His bubbles outpace him on his quest, but just as his lungs begin to scream from lack of oxygen he breaks through into sweet air. With huge gulping breaths, he pulls himself back to full awareness.

His vest feels heavy and tight and threatens to drag him down. Ronon's gun is still jammed safely into it, but his brain is insisting that he get it off. Off! He quickly unzips and wriggles out of his vest, and shoves it away from him to abandon it, but not before grabbing Ronon's particle magnum safely in his left hand. The vest floats away from him, semi-submerged. He rolls himself onto his back and floats as much as is possible. He really should take his boots off, too, but he'll do that in a minute if they become a real problem. Breathing is his priority right now.

Once he can properly breathe again, he takes a look around to orient himself. Atlantis is in front of him, a little over a mile away. He could probably swim that if he takes it slow. If Sheppard had been able to get the bay doors open there would already be a jumper in the air. He doesn't see anything, and Sheppard has to know he's probably in the water. So, no jumper means he has to swim, and he has to start sooner rather than later because the water is frigid. Who knows how long it's going to take to get a rescue flight into the air.

If he were in charge of rescuing himself, in this situation, his next move would be to dispatch a rubber dinghy from the nearest pier, but that would take a bit of time as well. Turning around to check his six, Lorne realises that he's not too far from the downed vessel. It must have hit the water not long after he did because the rear of the craft is only about a quarter mile away from him. He can't resist a bit of mental cheering. And maybe a smile. He did it. He'd brought the ship down!

The triumphant feeling of success is short-lived when he realises that the ship is sinking… with McKay on board.

Crap. The thought galvanises him. His vest is still just a few feet away, so he kicks himself over and grabs it. If he's going into the ship he might need it after all, so he takes a breath and submerges himself so that he can wrangle it back on. After zipping it up most of the way he carefully tucks Ronon's gun back into it. Ignoring the cold and the throbbing pain in his leg, Lorne twists himself away from the city and starts swimming.

He reaches the ship just as the right rear engine nacelle is about to go completely underwater. The outer hull is slippery as he pulls himself up the inclined surface, and he takes a moment to appreciate the fact that he hadn't pulled his boots off. Even filled with water they're pretty much the only traction he has as he slide-climbs his way along the ship towards the hole he made not long before. It's a sizeable gap, with slightly jagged outward-curling edges, but there's a couple of smoother parts where he could climb in without hurting himself. It's not all that far to drop in. He takes one last look towards Atlantis, but there is still no sign of a jumper.

The front half of the ship clearly has more air in it, judging by the nose-up tilt, and being space-worthy means it's airtight… hopefully on the inside as well. He needs to get through into the forward section quickly, find McKay, and get back out before the ship sinks too deep for them to swim out. He hopes McKay is still alive to actually make the swim. He takes a deep breath before slipping down into the alien vessel through the blown out section of the hull.

He lands in knee-deep water, in a fairly large room filled with machinery along the edges. The landing jars his leg something fierce yet again, and he bites back on a yell at the lancing pain that shoots up it from his ankle to his knee. He breathes three or four times as the pain subsides to a tolerable level and then he scans his surroundings as he gets his feet in underneath him. The water isn't pouring in through his breach yet, so it has to be coming from somewhere else. He possibly blew a hole in the lower hull as well, but it doesn't seem to be all that large because the water level isn't rising as fast as he had expected it to.

If he had to take a wild guess, he'd say he was in some sort of forward engine compartment, possibly part of the engineering bay. It's unlikely that they would keep their prisoners back here. Turning his attention to his next action, Lorne pulls out his flashlight, grits his teeth and begins to slosh forward through the dark interior until the slight tilt of the ship has him entirely out of the water by the entryway. There doesn't seem to be anyone in the room, but if there had been then they are likely dead and lying in the water filling up the rear half of the compartment.

There's no doorway by the entrance, which is bad design in his opinion. Spaceships should have lots of sealable doors. It's as much for structural reinforcement as it is to maintain an atmosphere in the event of a hull breach. You have to be able to segment your vessel, isolate the vacuum and limit the damage. He hopes the lack of one isn't a sign that there are none whatsoever. The dark corridor that he follows turns twice before he runs into his first airlock.

That's good news for his impromptu plan. These guys weren't total morons after all. The airlock seems pretty basic; it has a handle mechanism, a locking wheel, and what appears to be a clamp lock that can be electronically controlled. That's gonna have to go. He hauls Ronon's gun out of his vest again, glad to have held onto it. Hoping that it's designed to operate when wet, he takes aim and is relieved when it fires without trouble.

He blasts the lock off and dogs the hatch, then triggers the handle. It disengages and swings open with a bit of force to get it going. He carefully steps over the raised footwell into the forward section. He won't risk leaving the door open behind him. The ship isn't that large so he'll know within a few minutes whether McKay can be rescued or not. Every extra molecule of air trapped inside the ship means a greater chance of survival. The extra air might also prevent the ship from sinking so fast, so they won't be as deep when they attempt to make their exit.

Fortunately, it seems that the alien vessel still has some internal power because the lights are still on beyond the airlock although they're fairly dim. Probably emergency lighting, a reserve power supply, but it's good enough that he won't have to use his flashlight to get around. He spins the locking wheel of the hatch behind him after popping his flashlight back into his vest pocket. Gripping Ronon's blaster securely in his shivering hands, he moves up the corridor to the first intersection.

A thunk from around the corner gets his attention and he swings in barrel first to find one of the alien invaders trying to climb to its feet, clearly dazed. It's wearing the same heavy protective suit that the invaders were wearing. There's an acrid smoke venting in through the air ducts above them, and the alien figure suddenly lurches towards a box set against the wall. Lorne doesn't hesitate; he shoots for the neck. Even with his frozen fingers and shivering muscles, Lorne doesn't miss at such short range. Ronon's blaster rips through the flexible neck joint material and the figure drops instantly.

Lorne steps over the body and keeps going.


	6. Trapped

_Previously: Why wait until after the ship has sunk to go look for the treasure?  
Now: Sheppard never was very good at sitting still and doing nothing... (POV change)_

* * *

The explosion ripping outwards from the hull of the alien vessel had been a beautiful sight, but it was when the engines flared, sputtered and then exploded as well that Sheppard knew definitively that Lorne had succeeded in properly stopping the ship. It wouldn't be jumping to hyperspace anytime soon, and it wouldn't be able to flee at sublight either. The immediate change in trajectory told him that it was going to go down in the ocean.

Relief and pride over Lorne's success were tempered by concern for his XO, and for McKay. That had been a large bang, and the ship was going down. The Major would shortly be in the ocean if he wasn't already. McKay's status was also unknown. At this point, all they knew for certain was that MckKay was on the ship that was presently busy crashing into the sea. They needed to get a jumper in the air immediately. He abruptly hauled his aching body back inside, mollified to see that some medics from the Infirmary had made it up into the control room now that the fighting was over.

One was tending to Ronon, the other was doing a triage of the rest of the staff on the control deck. A third medic tried to intercept him but he dodged and ran up to the jumper bay, yelling at the nearest marines he could lay eyes on to come with him. Over the radio he could hear Radek still working with Chuck on the control console, yelling about patching a power relay in an attempt to open the jumper bay doors. Sheppard needed to be ready to go as soon as they had control again, so he ignored the residual aches and the assortment of cuts as he dashed up the steps and around the corner… into a sealed doorway.

The access door to the jumper bay was shut as well. He wasn't sure he had ever seen this doorway closed before and that came as more of a surprise to him than almost running right into it did. The two marines behind him pulled up short as they reached the top of the stairs, but sprang to help when Sheppard tried and failed to get the door to open using the crystal controls.

They first attempted to force open the access door, but it wasn't budging, even after one of the marines, Griffith, left and came back with a pry bar. While Griffith had gone to retrieve the bar, Sheppard had popped the cover on the door controls with his knife and tried McKay's patented switch-and-bridge technique using the crystals. That did nothing either, and the pry bar arrived just as Sheppard abandoned that approach. They put all their weight into using the bar, but eventually Sheppard called it, and Sanchez, the second marine, sprinted off to retrieve some C4 from the control room below.

As he set the charge, Sheppard couldn't help but shake his head at the irony that a door that was always open would now be permanently opened simply because it shut one time. One bad time. They dropped back around the corner into the stairwell to take cover, and with a quick warning across the radio channels just in case anyone had gotten stuck inside the jumper bay, Sheppard blew the door. Radek immediately radioed back to yell at Sheppard for blowing up more city infrastructure that the Engineering teams would ultimately end up fixing, and Sheppard simply yelled back at him to keep working on the power for the bay roof door.

When the smoke had cleared, Sheppard shot through the gaping hole that used to be a doorway and sprinted across the bay to Jumper 4. It was their rescue jumper, and coincidentally the one Lorne usually ended up flying more than anyone else because of all the times he had to pull AR-1 out of whatever new mess they had gotten themselves into. The little ship responded eagerly to his command, as always, and he dropped into the pilot seat to fire it up, ready to head out… except the jumper bay roof still wasn't opening.

Sheppard wasted valuable minutes sitting there, waiting, eventually yelling at Zelenka over the radio to DO SOMETHING while trying repeatedly to get the door open from within the jumper itself. It stubbornly refused to override the city control lockdown and open the roof. There was plenty of return yelling and muttering in Czech, interspersed by a horde of other radio reports from units throughout the city. Sheppard continued to collect reports and issue commands as he impatiently waited for the roof to retract.

With Woolsey away on Earth for an IOA summit and Teyla visiting Kanaan on New Athos with Torren, Sheppard had been temporarily appointed to head the civilian expedition as well. The roof still wasn't open, and all he could get out of Radek was Czech invectives. Antagonising the man didn't work like it did with McKay, so Sheppard shut up and started thinking about alternatives.

He could blow open the roof with a drone, but Radek would never forgive him for it and the man controlled both the crew quarters plumbing as well as unofficially running the non-existent Atlantis black market. He'd keep that as a last resort. A very last resort. Setting off the self-destruct would probably get him into less trouble. Even if he could balance someone on the roof of the jumper and hover just below the bay door they probably wouldn't have much success in forcing it open.

If the Jumpers were a total no-go, they had to get out to the ship some other way. Sheppard snapped his fingers; the boats! It had taken them a while but they had finally convinced the IOA and the SGC that a base floating in the middle of an ocean required watercraft, and qualified personnel to operate them. It had been Lorne's idea, actually, to bring on board (literally) a team of Navy specialists and some boats.

They were awaiting the component delivery of four 60-foot vessels over the next few Daedalus supply runs, but in the meantime, Lorne had argued for and gotten, eight small motorised inflatable craft. Zodiac CRRCs, they were called, and they could hold 6 people in full gear. Lorne had also managed to recruit 11 specialists from 3 different countries to make up the first Atlantis Naval Detachment. The Zodiacs were stationed in pairs on four different piers, and one of those stations was on the East Pier.

It took less than 30 seconds on the radio for the Navy team to retask from their various combat positions to an ocean SAR. In fact, by the time Sheppard had finished giving orders the first squad had already arrived at the Eastern dock and were prepping the first Zodiac for quick launch. These guys were damned good at their jobs, so he left them to it. Vying for his attention over the radio channels were medical reports flooding in about the stunned and the wounded, military chatter as a security sweep was run to check for leftover hostiles, and the multilingual cacophony that was the engineering team.

After what felt like an eternity, Zelenka's voice overrode all the others on the control channel as he triumphantly informed Sheppard that they had managed to hack in and reroute something through some alternate auxiliary system that ran through undamaged interior conduits which couldn't handle the full load of the control room power needs but was able to supply enough to the backup control console which in turn had to be hacked in order to transmit the necessary commands to the jumper bay door system… the explaining of which Sheppard promptly ignored when he saw the roof door slowly begin to iris open.

Glancing back as the jumper's rear hatch shut, Sheppard was surprised to see that the infirmary medic who had been treating Ronon down in the control room had joined them in the jumper as well, but he wasn't going to argue. If Lorne or anyone else really was in the water, they would need more than just 2 pairs of hands.

A medic could mean the difference between life and death.

* * *

 _Author's note: There might not be an update tomorrow (Sunday), but I promise there will be one on Monday._

 _Thanks to everyone who has left me a review so far!_

 _BMick - Sheppard is a very bad influence, but he's also a great influence when seen in the context of what's needed to survive the Pegasus Galaxy. As to the box - you'll have to wait and see!_

 _Vadercat & Sheppardlover928 - Only the best and brightest and most insane are sent to Atlantis. And these bad guys do sound a teensy bit like those pesky rogue Asgard, don't they? Guess we'll have to wait and see what's inside the suits._

 _Notary Sojac - Thanks for the compliment. I do try very hard to balance the action scene descriptions just right, so I'm happy to hear you're enjoying it!_


	7. (Re)Acquisition

_Previously: Sheppard gets antsy, gets C4, and finally gets a jumper in the air.  
Now: Lorne finds things.  
_

* * *

It took less time than he had expected.

Lorne found an unconscious McKay in the ninth room he blasted open. Three of those had contained groups of dead or unconscious enemy soldiers in them. He ignored them while rapidly cataloguing the contents of each room. Several had been filled with crates, others with hordes of machinery and piping along the walls. One had a cluster of consoles in the centre. It also had two more alien soldiers, alive but looking somewhat stunned, who had jerked up at his arrival. He'd repeated his neck shot approach and they had both gone down instantly.

His strategy was simple: If the room didn't contain McKay, he wasn't interested. If it contained something alive besides McKay, he killed it and moved on.

The ninth room had been a completely empty space - no equipment or control panels, and just a small sliver of a window on the far side. It showed nothing but water through the heavily tinted screen. McKay was a blue-grey lump lying in the middle of the room. Lorne had quickly moved to check on him, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he found a steady pulse below the gloriously warm skin. The erstwhile physicist was alive but unconscious, still stunned from when he had been taken not 30 minutes before. He hadn't even been bound. It's potentially an indication that they didn't expect him to wake up anytime soon, or perhaps it was just a sign of their confidence that he would be no threat to them if he did.

They clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into with McKay.

Lorne knows that if he drags an unconscious McKay into the water he'll drown, lacking the cognitive ability to hold his breath. But... this is a spaceship, and spaceships tend to have space suits, or at the very least oxygen supplies. And Lorne has an idea where he might find some. The pain in his leg is agony at this point, and his chest aches as well, but there's no other option. Grabbing and hefting McKay over his shoulders in a painful fireman's carry, he heads back to the cross corridor where he had shot the first alien.

Carefully putting McKay down, Lorne reaches up and yanks the cover off the box that the first alien had been reaching for when Lorne found him. He's expecting a gas mask or perhaps breathing apparatus. The corridor had been steadily filling with smoke at the time which is why he'd been counting on this box holding oxygen supplies.

He's not expecting a crate full of Particle Magnum guns.

Whoa.

There are twelve visible in the outer layer alone, interspersed with spare energy cells. Lorne blinks. He blinks once more, and his mind is made up. He grabs four of the particle magnums and shoves them down his shirt, instead of just into his vest. He has to unzip his vest more than it already it just to get them in. He can't fit more, not if he wants to have space for Ronon's as well. He fits six energy cells into his quickly emptied vest pockets before running out of space.

Using his shirt for the guns instead of his vest is deliberate - he is likely to need to ditch the vest again in the water, and he'd rather throw away energy cells than guns. His vest also sort-of-floats, so there's a chance that it can be recovered if they get to it soon enough. He takes one last longing look at the remaining weapons before carefully closing the box up again. Perhaps one day they can come back down with jumpers and salvage the entire ship, and in that case, it would be better if the contents of the box hadn't been soaking in salt water. Twelve Particle Magnums just like Ronon's.

Twelve.

And he had four of them.

Why were there Particle Magnums on this ship?

It made no sense for the invading force to have been using those weird electric-crackle-stun-pulse ray guns when they had freaking Particle Magnums at their disposal. He would definitely have invaded Atlantis with Particle Magnums instead. The thought lasts only a second before he realises he's relieved that they hadn't thought to use the Pulse Magnums for the invasion. Their stupidity had been Atlantis' advantage; the fight for the control room would have ended badly, quickly, if they had been up against proper weapons. That was enough dwelling on the topic; time to get back to the matter at hand. He needs to find breathing apparatus.

Further down the passageway is a recess that appears to be holding another box. He considers for a second, then decides to leave McKay where he is. The engine room with the hull breach is back the other way, and there's no point in dragging McKay further away from their destination. It'll delay him both ways. A few long strides and a small jump on aching legs (and damn, he's going to have to remember not to land on his injured leg again) to skirt the dead alien body brings him to the nook where the next box is and it's but a few seconds work to get it open.

It's filled with more of the red-black spherical grenades he had used to get into the ship, and he warily eyes them. Three of them had blown a hole almost as large as a jumper in the hull. Five seconds of deliberation leads to him tossing away one of the energy cells from his vest and replacing it with a grenade. He might need to blast a way out of the ship if he can't go back out the same way he came in.

Hopefully, he won't need more than one to make a hole large enough to fit a person through. He turns to the next box after refitting the cover on the second. Third time's the charm; a row of glassy translucent face-shaped masks attached to little cylindrical-shaped metal containers. At the very least, having his face covered by a full-face mask will give McKay a few vital seconds of extra air and breathability. He'll just have to swim fast.

Lorne stops as a thought occurs to him - every single one of the aliens had been dressed in those full body suits, even inside their own ship. What if they don't breathe oxygen? But then why would the interior of the ship be filled with what seems to be perfectly breathable air? Perhaps they were just all in full battle gear, in case. Just to be sure, he carefully depresses what seems to be the valve on one of the cylinders and cautiously sniffs at the hissing gas inside the mask. There's nothing unusual about it, and it seems to just be plain old compressed air. It's excellent news.

Their odds of surviving this escape attempt just increased dramatically.

He grabs two, shuts the box, and heads back to where McKay is still slumped against the wall. This time he does a careful double step over the alien's legs instead of trying to jump over the body.

Lorne shivers violently as he fits one of the odd masks to McKay's face. There are no straps, so he reckons there has to be some other mechanism to attach the mask to a face. Hopefully, it's actually meant for a face, and not just the faceplate attachment for a suit of some sort. If all else fails he'll use his belt, or one of the bandages that he discarded from his vest, to strap the damn thing to McKay's head. But first he'll experiment on McKay, so after situating the mask edges properly he triggers the valve on the cylinder. The mask hisses, and the rubbery edging ripples before promptly suctioning itself onto McKay's face, like an octopus suctioning onto skin.

Yes! Auto-sealing! He tugs experimentally on the mask but it seems to have a pretty firm grip on McKay's face. A hand to the physicists' chest and a close look through the faceplate shows McKay breathing perfectly normally. This is going to work. Without hesitation, he pressed the second one down over his own face. Here's hoping that if he runs into any more invaders they might be momentarily thrown by the mask and particle magnum combo, and not expect him to be Lantean underneath it. That would give him precious extra moments to react; time to evade or shoot, whichever is needed most. Around him the ship makes a sharp groaning noise, signalling the increasing pressure of the outside water on the ship. He quickly triggers the valve. There's a momentary feeling of cold and a gentle, shuddery tingle as the edges suction against his skin.

The cool, clean air flows into his face and he breathes deeply, realising for the first time that the air in the ship had become stale by comparison. It makes sense - the life support system probably isn't cycling air anymore. The smoke that had been filling the ship during his first alien encounter had stopped soon after, but he hadn't registered the lack of air circulation that went with it. He had been too cold to focus on anything but clearing rooms and finding McKay. He has no idea how much air these cylinders hold, and he has no idea how deep they've sunk so far.

He needs to get moving.

Once again he ignores the protests of his body as he hefts McKay in a fireman's carry and heads towards the rear of the ship at the most rapid pace his shaking legs can manage. His previous jaunt into the frigid water has left him feeling frozen to the core, and his leg is screaming at him with each step. He can still walk though, so he ignores the pain and pushes onwards, not feeling the least bit guilty at enjoying the warmth coming off McKay's body where it's wrapped over his cold and shivering shoulders.

If things go the way he hopes then they'll both be very cold very soon.


	8. Flight

_Previously: Particle Magnums! And oxygen masks! Did I mention the Particle Magnums?  
Now: Sheppard uses those superior counting skills, and Lorne does some math of his own.  
_

* * *

They were finally in the air approximately twenty minutes after the ship had gone down. Sheppard had the jumper hovering the instant the roof iris began to retract. As they shot out the tower he brought the drive pods online and readied the drones.

They encounter... nothing.

There is no sign of the aerial fighters. A quick scan confirms that the small craft that had been strafing the city are all simply gone.

Sheppard doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and immediately weaves the jumper down through the buildings towards the East Pier, shooting over the spot where the alien vessel had been docked to the city. As they clear the structures and cut over the sea he calls up the HUD again and initiates a life signs scan of the ocean leading up to the downed vessel in the distance. The first Zodiac has launched and is steadily making its way out from the dock. The scan completes, and pings back the three life signs aboard the small boat.

There are no other life signs in the water.

Sheppard's stomach goes hollow as he processed the realisation that Lorne had succeeded in taking down the alien ship at the expense of his own life.

Damn.

He radios the team in the boat to let them know to keep an eye open for bodies in the water. A simple "Aye, sir" is their terse acknowledgement; they understand exactly what he's saying. There's a silence on the radio, the chatter squashed by the sobering news. He can't dwell on Lorne's death right now. Sheppard kicks the Jumper engines up a notch and makes a beeline for the downed spaceship. The LSD can't pick up life signs inside the structure from this far out, and it's probably not helped by the fact that the ship is mostly underwater. As they approach the alien vessel the HUD mentally pinged at him: there were five life signs inside.

No, wait, make that... Four. One of the blips has blinked off permanently in front of his eyes. Sheppard grimaced, and hoped that McKay was one of the remaining four.

By the time they reached it, only the tip of the ship wasn't completely submerged, and the entire craft was busy sinking pretty rapidly, tilted at a downward angle to the rear. How the hell were they going to do this? The water was really cold this time of year, and the impromptu rescue crew he had weren't divers, nor did they have the kit to go down there. The navy boys in the approaching Zodiac had the right gear, but it was going to take too long for them to get here.

What exactly were they trying to achieve, anyway? Even if they got into the ship, there was no guarantee that one of those life signs even belonged to McKay, and at the rate its sinking it's too dangerous to send anybody in. They would be dragged down to their death along with the four inside.

One of those four just quite possibly could be McKay.

Three.

Another lifesign winked out from inside the vessel. The nose of the ship disappeared under the water and the craft began to slip out of view. At this rate there wouldn't be anybody left to save. He had to come up with a plan to somehow stop the ship from sinking. Maybe he could submerge the jumper underneath it and push it back up to the surface? That was probably the best he could do right now, before….

Two.

Sheppard stopped calculating and dove.

~o~o~o~

Lorne and the unconscious McKay don't encounter anyone else, fortunately, and he can only presume that they've been killed or injured by the crash, or have escaped some other way. Spaceships tend to have ejection pods, right? Maybe this one is too small. Maybe they won't work underwater. After all, most spaceships are designed for space, for vacuum. The jumpers are unique in that way, meant to operate seamless in vacuum, atmo and underwater. The temperature inside the ship has also dropped, probably thanks to it sinking into the cold water.

Lorne can only tell that it's gotten colder because his breath is starting to mist in front of his face. Who knows how much water is above them by now. He's hoping it's not all that much yet. As if on cue, the ship shudders and lurches again, accompanied by a metallic screeching, almost throwing him off balance. He's walking mostly downhill though, so the stumble just pushes him in the right direction.

He manages to grab a bulkhead and get his frozen feet back under him properly without dropping McKay or even bumping him into anything. The pressure on his ears is tangible, but he's had worse on a commercial flight, so they can't be that deep just yet. That sound wasn't very encouraging though. The ship shudders again, more screeching of metal on metal, almost like the ship is scraping against something. Or, maybe that's the sound this particular alien metal makes when it's busy buckling and breaking.

They might not be too deep yet, but Lorne knows that as soon as he opens the door that's going to rapidly change. They'll have a way out, but the water will have a way in. It's not that far from the sealed hatch to the large hole he blasted in the bulkhead, though, and they have an air supply now. They can make it.

They have to make it.

Reaching the door, Lorne lowers McKay down against the bulkhead next to the frame and turns him so that his back is towards the wall. He yanks off the physicists' enviably dry shoes, and then grudgingly decides to ditch his own vest and boots now already. It looks like he won't need the grenade after all, but the power cells…

He fits two into the cargo pockets of his pants, and leaves everything else. They don't need the extra weight pulling them down in the water. He momentarily considers ditching the stash of guns currently shoved into his shirt, but a stubbornness radiates through him. These assholes attacked Atlantis unprovoked, did a ton of damage, tried to kidnap their scientists, and he's survived two death-defying jumps already just to get this far. He wants them, and they're not **that** heavy. Well, they're a little heavy, all four of them. He's glad he didn't give in to greed and try to take more of them. As it is, trying to haul both his own battered and frozen body, as well as McKay's unconscious form up to the surface from however deep they already are, is going to be hard work.

Eyeing the unconscious physicist lying in front of him, it occurs to him that McKay might actually be of some help, even in his current state. At the very least, Lorne can be smart about it, and double the odds. He hauls two of the four particle magnums out and tucks them into McKay's shirt instead, along with the rest of the power cells from his vest. He then shoves Ronon's back into his own shirt. If Ronon's gun is going to be lost, it's going to be on him, not McKay.

With a face mask supplying oxygen, and the scientist's slightly more.. rotund physique… he shouldn't have too much trouble floating on the surface, even with the extra baggage. And if the cold water wakes McKay up, he's not going to forego swimming to investigate some weird lumps in his clothing. It's more than a little awkward to tuck the physicist's shirt into his uniform pants and cinching the belt tightly. McKay hadn't been wearing a jacket that day, but fortunately his shirt isn't too tight and is long enough that the belt seems to be holding it well. If it comes lose at the bottom then everything will simply slip out into the water.

Satisfied that it's as good as it's going to get, Lorne crouches down and insinuates himself between McKay and the wall, turning the physicist towards him and hooking his right arm around the doctor's back.

With his left hand Lorne begins to spin open the wheel lock on the door. He's expecting the water to surge in strongly, and doesn't want McKay pulled away from him or the door. He takes a deep breath, gives himself a second to enjoy the last bit of warmth radiating off the unconscious physicist, braces himself, and triggers the door mechanism.

The ocean roars in.


	9. Up

_Previously: Sheppard takes his spaceship into the ocean, while Lorne brings the ocean into his spaceship.  
Now: Cold Lorne not so good brain anymore even by dark surface empty with swim. Up._

* * *

The pressure from the water shoves the entire door inwards, and Lorne has barely any warning time to release the mechanism and grab onto a handle placed against the bulkhead. It's probably there to provide a leverage point for people to swing the door open. Right now, it's the only thing stopping them from being washed away as the water bursts into the room through the doorway.

Lorne holds on with all the strength his frozen and battered body can manage. He clings to the bulkhead, clings to McKay, and squashes his face mask into McKay's in an attempt to anchor them both against the torrential flood. He doesn't want them getting ripped off by the water.

The freezing water surging past and over and around them is like shards of ice scraping against his skin and burning it away.

Lorne thinks he's probably imagining it, but it feels even colder the second time around.

It takes about 30 seconds for the gushing to stop as the water and interior air battle their way to an uneasy equilibrium. Lorne and McKay are completely submerged in the icy water, but the masks are still in place and McKay is still breathing. He's also still unconscious, despite all the manhandling and now being unceremoniously dunked into freezing water. Lorne is somewhat relieved. An awake McKay would probably be a panicking McKay, and right now would be a bad time to panic and possibly dislodge the mask.

He wants to joke that an unconscious McKay is the best kind of McKay to deal with, but he wouldn't be here to rescue the man if he really believed that.

He owes McKay his life many times over.

The eddying water is still pushing inwards, but it's not so strong that Lorne can't maneuver McKay and himself around the bulkhead and out through the doorway. Pulling McKay through the water is a helluva lot easier than carrying him had been, albeit a little bit slower. The corridor beyond isn't too long, but it is dark. Lorne had forgotten about the lack of power in this section. How did he forget? He sighs internally; he had ditched his flashlight with his vest. He knows it's unlikely that it didn't get washed away by the inpouring of water, but he twists back to check anyway.

His vest is long gone.

They're so close to getting out that there's no point in going back to look for it. He'll just have to make his way out in the dark. He may have forgotten about the darkness, but the corridor had been smooth and empty when he'd come in, and there's only one way to go, so he should be able to feel his way through.

Lorne pulls McKay closer and begins to swim.

There's a right, then a left, and then they're back in the room with the hull breach. His eyes have somewhat adjusted to the darkness by the time they reach the engineering bay, so the faint light from the open ocean filtering in through the hole is like a neon sign. The cold of the water is eating away at Lorne, sapping his energy, almost burning at his skin, but he's kept alert by the pain in his leg. It flares up with each strong kick he has to give to propel them both out through the massive hole and into the open ocean. It hurts less than it did when he was walking, though.

They've cleared the breach.

They're out of the ship.

Lorne can't see the surface itself, but there are dim rays of light piercing down through the water. They're not too deep, but they're deep enough that he has to work for it to get them both moving up. They're probably a good 30 meters under. He grips McKay tightly against his chest, pinning the scientist's back against his front.

Not only does it ensure he won't lose the physicist he had gone to so much trouble to rescue, it also pinned all five guns into place in their respective stash spots, improving the odds of holding on to at least some of them. Lorne keeps kicking, slow and steady, grateful that he can at least breathe this time around.

The surface is approaching, almost visible now, but he doesn't want to go too fast.

Up. _Don't go up too fast._

After all this he doesn't want to kill them because of rapid decompression. As they ascend and the pressure decreases, the air in their bodies would expand. Ascend too fast, and you could burst blood vessels or worse. He can't afford a safety stop, though. Soon the slow ascent isn't voluntary anymore - his strength is fading quickly, and Lorne is exhausted, worn out by the cold and the pain and the effort. The up effort.

 _Go up_.

The weightlessness of the water isn't helping his drowsiness, but he knows that giving in to the darkness will be the last thing he ever does. He's still kicking, or at least he thinks he is. He can't really feel his legs or feet any more. Still, he continues to instruct his muscles to perform the motion that his brain knows is equivalent to kicking, regardless of the lack of feedback. At least he can still breathe. He has to go up. _Up._

The surface gets closer and closer; the sunlight gets brighter and brighter. Soon the expanding air in their lungs contributes to their natural buoyancy, aiding in their quest for ascension.

Ascension. Hah. He's trying to _ascend_.

 _Keep kicking._

After an eternity that was probably only a few minutes long, Lorne and his precious cargo burst through the surface.

They're up. They made it.

It's not much warmer up here, and Lorne vaguely registers.. Disappointment? Something in his brain is confused about the concept of warmth. He really should be warmer, right? The sun is shining, after all. _Sun equals warmth_. Still, they're up. _Up is good_.

Now he just has to _hold on_ until a rescue jumper… can… can come to pull them… should be here already… to pull them... out of… out of… the… water. _Cold water_.

Lorne can't really finish his thought, because the biting cold has numbed him to the point where he can't feel the temperature any more. As the lack of pain, the lack of everything hits his brain, he becomes aware of the fact that it kinda hurts, deep inside, in his lungs… every breath hurts, but at least he's not swallowing water thanks to the mask on his face.

Lorne manages to coax both his popsicle of a body and McKay's limp icicle form onto their backs in a semi floating position. He just needs to _take deep breaths_ , keep the air in his lungs, keep floating… but the air in his mask is.. thin. Thin? Stale. He's probably running out. _Out of air_. In the up. He's up.

 _Up has_ air _._

He should probably take it off. Who needs a bloody mask anyway? He can see the sky. _The pretty sky._ The sky is brilliantly blue, a glorious cloudless vista above him, an endless supply of fresh air. Empty, too. Too blue, and too empty. _It shouldn't be empty._

Why shouldn't it be empty?

Lorne really doesn't care anymore. It's not important. What did he want to take off?

The guns are important. Guns.. and… McKay. Scientist.

Scientists are important. Something else is important too. Something.. Empty. Sky. In the sky. Up! Jumper! Jumpers fly through the sky. Up.

 _There should be a jumper._

He vaguely recalls an earlier thought that Sheppard would have had one in the air the moment the alien ship had hit the water. Possibly before. Or a … boat? _Atlantis doesn't have boats_.

It's silly. Atlantis should have boats. It's a city floating on the ocean. Why no boats?

Lorne's arm is still wrapped around McKay, but he can't feel either of them. He can't feel his legs. He thinks that maybe he can't feel his brain, either. Even the pain of breathing is starting to subside. Wait. That's supposed to be a bad thing, not a good thing.

Right?

Lorne can't remember. He's too numb to think. Breathing, though. Breathing. He needs to get his mask off. Air! He flails his free arm, smacking himself in the faceplate as he tries to yank at the edge of the mask with numb fingers. His pale and wrinkly and slightly..blue.. digits... stubbornly refuse to work like they should. Or maybe it's the mask that's not working like it should.

How does the mask come off again?

 _How did the mask go on_?

Lorne doesn't remember how he made the mask engage, until the memory of it suctioning onto McKay's face when he turned on the oxygen supply pops into his mind. Maybe it will work in reverse! He needs to stop the air, so he can get air. No? Yes. Yes, that made no sense but all the sense at the same time. _Stop air to get air._ Air! His deadened hand is refusing to grip properly, and the mask is still firmly adhered to his face.

He fumbles for the canister valve button, but can't find it. He needs to stay calm. Calm is his thing. Calm is his superpower. _Stay calm_. Think. He can re-breathe the air in the mask a couple of times before it becomes too CO2 heavy. He just has to calm down, breathe through his nose. _Rescue will come_. Hopefully before he suffocates. He can think and calm and then… something. Off something.

 _Whatever_.

The sky isn't so brightly blue anymore. There's a darkness to it, and Lorne's malfunctioning mind tries to label it a sunset, but it's so fast. _Too fast_. There's an unexpected wave that sloshes over them from the side, and there's a strange humming noise in his ears, growing louder but sounding farther and farther away with each passing second. Water washes over his field of view again, and he sluggishly tries to order his unresponsive body to stay up. Up! The water washes over his face again, but this time the dark sky doesn't come back.

It takes long seconds for Lorne's brain to register that he's sinking. _Sinking is bad_.

Up! Swim up again. Float.

Hold on to McKay.

 _No_. No no, don't hold on to McKay. Hold him up. _Let him go._

 _UP_. Don't drag McKay down. Let go. McKay had to stay up. That was the whole point. _Get McKay Up_.

Let go.

Lorne was sinking, and he couldn't stop it. His body was no longer responding to any commands, and his brain… his brain was… sinking just as fast as he was.

But he sure as hell wasn't going to take McKay down with him if he could help it.

 _Let go_.

The darkness claimed him before he could do anything about it.


	10. Out

_Previously: Lorne makes it to the surface, but there's that pesky suffocating. Or hypothermia. Maybe both?  
Now: Sheppard goes down to go up. The Jumper doesn't like it much._

* * *

Sheppard slid the jumper underneath the sinking ship, and with a rough thud and grinding screeching, started pushing the alien ship back up. The jumper engines strained against the mass of the much larger vessel, trying to prevent it from sinking but only managing to slow its descent. It wasn't working. Those last two life signs were going to go down with the ship, and Sheppard couldn't stop it.

The scraping of metal on metal ground through the hull of the jumper as he closed his eyes and willed the little craft to push upwards with everything he could get it to give. After several minutes of working against gravity, shuddering against the mass of metal and water above them, it finally began to feel as though they had managed to halt the downward progression. The jumper engines were doing the Ancient equivalent of redlining, but they were at least holding steady.

It wasn't good enough.

If he could just push a little bit more, push back up... The ship was supposed to weigh less in the water, shouldn't it? It felt pretty heavy judging by the way the mental interface was complaining at him. The ship was more than twenty times the size of the jumper. It gave him an idea, and he mentally dialed up the inertial dampeners and extended the dampening field asymmetrically upwards to encompass part of the alien ship. It gave him the slight edge he needed; the artificial negation of a portion of the mass of the ship above him allowed the jumper's upward force to outclass the downward force of the sinking ship.

Just barely.

It was a slow and arduous upward inching. The depth indicator crept back upwards; 40m, 38m, 36m, 34m, 32m...

At the 30m mark the field generator began to flash red. The extended inertial dampeners were drawing heavy amounts of power, so it had been pulling from the reserve power to compensate. The backup had run out, and they were on pure power from the drive pods which couldn't handle both the lift and the lopsided field. He had to scale back the output or risk burning out the engines. The inertial field dissipated, and their progress was halted. The full weight of the alien ship settled back onto the roof of the jumper with a metallic scraping and shuddering. The engines were back to regular redline straining against the mass above.

They wouldn't be able to keep this up forever.

There had to be something else he could do. If he couldn't lift the ship alone...They needed more jumpers! Extra jumpers would be able to push the ship up together, and also bring out some divers with their emergency kit. Yes! Sheppard lifted a hand to engage his comm.

His radio crackled to life.

A voice; he doesn't know whose. There was something in the water! No, wait.

There was _someone_ in the water.

Sheppard mentally flicked the HUD LSD back on and switched to a horizontal plane view, and saw that the last two life signs which had previously been in the ship were now floating at the surface. There was nobody left alive inside the alien vessel, and no point in trying to prevent it from sinking further.

They had to get to the people in the water.

With a shuddering and scraping he extricated the jumper from underneath the alien vessel, and headed for the surface, breaking through to beautiful blue sky just a few meters off to the side of the pulsing dots on his HUD.

There were two masked figures in the water, one holding the other from behind. As he tried to make out whether they were friend or foe, the one at the back slipped under the water. Crap. They had to hurry. Sheppard yelled to the back and immediately swung the jumper around and lowered the hatch while Sanchez readied a rope to an anchor point at the door for the retrieval. Griffiths was digging through the rescue kit for towels and blankets and the medic had cracked open a med kit and was preparing an O2 canister and other equipment.

Literally skimming the surface of the water, Sheppard backed up at the Marines' instruction until they were able to reach down and grab the one remaining floating figure. He glanced at the life signs detector again. The sunken one was still alive. The mask was probably preventing it from drowning, but it was definitely going down, fast. It was three... four... five meters down.

He yelled the increasing numbers to the marines in the back. He didn't have to ask. He didn't have to order. There was a thud, another thud, a clang, and a shuffle, followed by a splash as someone dove into the icy water. Trying to hold the jumper steady and level just above the water meant he could only peer over his shoulder and vaguely see what was happening in the rear compartment.

Relief flooded through him when Griffiths hollered that they had McKay, and that he was unconscious and on the cold side but breathing fine inside the mask. Hope welled up in him at the news; he tamped it down immediately and remained quiet, waiting. Not 30 seconds later there was more splashing and Griffiths yelled at him to reverse another three meters, then more sloshing and splashing as first a masked body and then a gasping Sanchez were hauled back into the jumper.

Five seconds later they were clear. Griffiths yelled at him to go, and Sheppard resolutely kept his eyes forward as he shut the rear hatch and lifted the jumper up to head for the tower.

Another five seconds later whatever relief he may have felt and whatever hope he had harboured were crushed when Sanchez, in a rather more breathless and panicked tone, reported that their other tango was Major Lorne… except Lorne wasn't breathing, and he was 'beyond frigid'. They were still trying to get the mask off. The medic was struggling to find a pulse.

A few seconds later there was a hissing squelch and a face mask was tossed out of the way. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him Sanchez, still soaking wet, starting CPR while the medic attached the O2 canister to an ambu bag and covered the Major's face. He had to turn his attention back to avoiding crashing the jumper into one of the buildings. Behind him, Sanchez swore, but it was more of a surprised expletive than a panicked one, and Sheppard heard some rattling and thunks before the rhythmic sounds of CPR started up again.

When he glanced back again Sanchez and the medic were blocking his view of Lorne, but on the other side of the jumper he could see Griffiths removing McKay's mask and wrapping him in some spare towels. Sheppard took a deep breath to steady himself and activated the comm to broadcast on all frequencies; he only wanted to do this once. It took all his command training to sound perfectly calm as he informed the tower that they had McKay and Lorne on board and requested a medical team to meet them in the jumper bay with a crash cart and hypothermia supplies. He ordered the naval unit to continue patrolling the area where the alien ship went down. A chorus of affirmative responses filtered back to him as he urged the jumper towards the bay at the top of the central spire.

Lorne had stopped the alien ship. Lorne had saved McKay.

Lorne was dying.

He had to fly faster.

* * *

 _My apologies for leaving you all on the worst cliffie of the series and not posting last night; I had an international team meeting via Skype that lasted until well after 23:00 and I was too exhausted to edit and prep a new chapter for publication. Here it is though, and we should be back to our regularly scheduled daily posting. Only 3 chapters remain, plus the artwork. Thank you to all my readers and followers and especially to my reviewers! You guys rock, and are way too smart for your own good. I need to stop being so predictable..._


	11. Waiting

_Previously: Sheppard does nasty things to Jumper 4, but the two people most likely to yell at him for it are the same two he's trying to rescue.  
Now: Lorne is out of the water, but not out of the woods._

* * *

 _Two weeks later_

~o~o~o~

Sheppard scrubbed a hand over his face. He was tired and hungry, but mostly just terrified that he would be stuck doing all this paperwork by himself forever if Lorne didn't wake up soon.

Incidents like these generated a lot of paperwork.

Paperwork that Lorne usually handled.

The crazy bad-ass alien-ship-destroying enemy-weakness-identifying life-saving Major had been successfully resuscitated in the Jumper bay, and then again a short while later in the infirmary. Unfortunately, the hypothermia, oxygen deprivation, twice-fractured leg, abundance of earlier inhaled saltwater, and some internal injuries (including multiple cracked ribs, partly courtesy of Sanchez's life-sustaining CPR), coupled with a slow internal bleed had all combined forces to lock Lorne down into a coma. It had taken them nearly two days to get the Major's core body temperature back up to normal levels.

Lorne had been on a ventilator for 11 days, mostly for precautionary reasons, and had been extubated three days before. Beckett was pretty happy with his lung function, and he seemed to be breathing just fine on his own now. He still had supplemental oxygen. Two surgeries, one to deal with the leg, and the other to find and repair the internal bleeding, had been successful.

Beckett had said that his vitals were improving, slowly, and that it was to be expected because of the hypothermia, but had also cautioned that the longer Lorne was comatose, the lower the chances were of him ever waking up. It was simply a waiting game at this point. If nothing changed by the time the Daedalus arrived in another two weeks' time, they would have to seriously consider sending him back to Earth for long-term care.

That, or cut off the life support completely.

Lorne was showing minimal signs of brain activity, consistent with someone in a deep coma, but also not unheard of for someone who had been practically frozen to death. Sheppard had refused to even consider the possibility of willful termination. Lorne was getting better.

He had to get better.

The longer he had life support, the more chance his body had to heal; to get proper rest and to get stronger. Sheppard wouldn't accept that Lorne had survived everything he had been through so far, just to be killed by the Air Force themselves. Under normal circumstances, his next of kin would have been called in to make the decision, but when it came to the SGC things worked a little differently. Weird things happened all the time, and new tech was constantly being discovered.

Lorne had instructions in his medical file that gave Carson (or Keller, in Carson's absence) free reign to do whatever he thought would keep him alive, including the testing of new medical tech; if he felt that life was no longer possible he had to get sign-off from a triumvirate consisting of Sheppard, Teyla and (strangely enough) Dr Zelenka before he could terminate. Even then, Lorne had left instructions for his body to be put to use in the Atlantis labs. Zelenka had been a little gobsmacked to hear that he was one-third of Lorne's medical proxy. He had stammered and fidgeted, yelled at Sheppard for the damage he had caused to Jumper 4, and had said something probably rude in Czech before waving vaguely and announcing that "Major is fighter, let him fight" before disappearing back to his repair tasks.

Teyla had simply nodded her assent, so it had been left to Sheppard to glare at Carson in a manner that said "fix him" until the Scot had kicked him out of the infirmary and gone back to "doing his voodoo science" on McKay. Sheppard hated the waiting that came with having someone in the infirmary, but he couldn't complain too much. The infirmary was better than dead.

If Lorne hadn't been wearing that breathing mask, he would have been dead. Despite running out of air, the mask had protected his lungs from being flooded with (more) seawater during his final submergence. Beckett's analysis had revealed that while it was mostly a compressed air mix, there were higher levels of other trace gases than was Earth-normal. Still, it had been close enough to regular air to sustain them both well enough.

McKay's mask had prevented him from drowning too. The physicist had still been stunned, so his oxygen consumption had been less than the Major's by virtue of being unconscious. His cylinder had far more oxygen left in it than Lorne's had. There didn't appear to be any sort of indicator on the unit of the oxygen level, so it was likely blind luck that Lorne's unit held less air.

McKay's time in the cold water had also been far less than that of the Major, and he had bounced back from the stunning and the minor hypothermia within two days and was back in his lab berating his minions about shoddy city repairs on the third. Sanchez had simply taken a warm shower, downed a hot cup of coffee and had promptly joined one of the cleanup teams (with Beckett's approval). "Marines don't get cold" had been his only comment. Sheppard had written up a commendation for him, as well as a glowing report for his and Griffiths' conduct. Sheppard had encouraged Beckett to write one up for the medic, Zia, as well. The Naval unit had patrolled the ocean for another hour before Sheppard had remembered to call them back in.

McKay had no recollection of anything beyond turning around to see a suited figure standing at the entrance of his lab, and being stunned. He woke up in the infirmary about four hours after his return to discover that he'd been for 'a lovely little joyride in an alien ship, and an unexpected little swim' in the meantime, and had no explanation for the stash of particle magnums and energy cells found stuffed into both his and Lorne's shirts. That had been quite a mystery for them all.

Not that it had stopped McKay from trying to lay claim to the items found on his person, mind you.

Sheppard had confiscated all of the weapons except Ronon's and had them sent off to Radek for inspection at a later date. The repairs to the control room and the jumper bay access door would come first. There had been some damage to at least three other towers, one of which had resulted in a rather large fire. The labs on those three levels had been empty at the time because of a combination of the lunch hour and a prompt evacuation by the few remaining scientists.

It was obvious that Lorne had encountered the stash on the alien vessel. When Sanchez had tried to start compressions he had encountered Lorne's sub-shirt stash, and they'd had to remove them before he could continue. Sheppard had already begun putting together a plan for a jumper salvage operation down to the alien vessel to see what else could be retrieved. McKay was less enthusiastic about the idea of going back down. It was his second underwater jaunt in a sinking spacecraft, and despite having been unconscious for the entirety of the second he wasted no time in declaring it to have been a horrific experience and one that he had no intention of repeating, jumper or alien craft.

He was also tired of being abducted right out the city by armoured shield-piercing aliens.

When the dust had settled and they'd had a chance to breathe, Sheppard had ordered the rebuilt Midway station be dialled. They had transmitted through a report about the attack and it had been forwarded to Earth immediately. Woolsey had wrapped up the IOA meetings in record time. Even with the 24 hour waiting period at Midway, he had been back in the city by the third day. Woolsey (and Sheppard too, although he hid it behind his casual slouching and optimistic comments) was mostly concerned about retrieving intelligence about the attackers that would help identify their origins and reasons for attacking Atlantis.

Everyone wanted to know who the hell these guys were.

They had flown right through the city's shield without any problem, had known exactly where they were going, and had specifically tried to kidnap Atlantis scientists. The general consensus in the after-action analysis was that they had been aiming for the Engineering and Physics labs. They had targeted McKay and his team. The assault on the control room was likely a decoy strategy, intended to keep the command team focused on protecting the gate room. They hadn't even bothered with the ZPM.

It was somewhat reminiscent of the attack by the rogue Asgard faction, except this time inspection of the various dead bodies littered around the city had revealed completely normal Pegasus-type human occupants. Beckett and Biro had put together a team and autopsied all of the aliens (thankfully with less exploding of suits), and had found nothing out of the ordinary. Typical Pegasus foodstuffs were found in their diet and their physical characteristics were completely ordinary... for planet-dwellers. Unlike the Travellers who had some deficiencies stemming from extended space-based life, these guys appeared to live planetside. They looked, lived, and clearly ate exactly the same as your average Pegasus inhabitants.

Except they were very clearly not average Pegasus inhabitants.

Where the hell had they come from?

* * *

 _I have little to no medical training whatsoever beyond CPR and basic first aid. I made all the medical things up in the time-honoured tradition of bad television, and I apologise profusely to anyone in the medical profession who URGHs or GAHs because of my excessive Lorne Whumpage_


	12. Paperwork

_Previously: Lorne is taking a really long nap, and Sheppard has to simply wait.  
Now: McKay makes a video. Sheppard does paperwork._

* * *

Sheppard had told Woolsey not to panic. It had, overall, been a rather small attack force, and despite the initial setbacks they had managed to quickly figure out a weakness (thanks to Lorne) and successfully repel the invaders. The ship hadn't made it off the planet, so Sheppard hoped it would serve as a warning and deterrent to the others (if there were others) that attacking Atlantis wasn't the smartest thing to do.

When the not-so-alien-after-all ship had gone down, the small circling craft had just… stopped. They'd fallen out of the sky, like puppets with cut strings. Upon inspection of the debris, Dr Kusanagi had reported that the craft appeared to be unmanned drones. Their only purpose was to add to the confusion and panic, fire at crucial power conduits to disrupt city systems, and divert attention away from the ground forces. The tech was odd; it was Ancient-like, making some use of crystals, but the finishing was completely different. Their power source was reminiscent of Earth-type batteries, working on the same principles to generate electricity.

Speaking of working...

Sheppard eyed the list of outstanding tasks on his tablet. Sighing, he gave up on trying to choose which one to do next. Saving his progress and tucking it under his arm, he stood up and made his way down to the mess hall for a cup of coffee. With his mug refilled, he headed in the direction of the infirmary, intent on spending some time sitting next to Lorne's bed, hoping that today would be the day that Lorne decided to finish his little nap and rejoin the land of the living. Maybe sitting next to Lorne would help him get some work done - it worked well enough for their joint office hours. Sheppard had hated Lorne when the XO had first instituted the mandated paperwork periods, but within a few months, he had realised that actually working with Lorne during those times resulted in him spending less time in his office overall. Not that he would ever tell Lorne that sitting next to him made doing paperwork easier.

He was desperate though. Two weeks of handling everything alone was driving him up the wall, and Major Teldy had been no help at all. She was only willing to do the officially tasked XO's office paperwork. He had never realised just how much of his paperwork Lorne was doing, in addition to his own. This is why he found himself making his way to the Major's bed, trying to convince himself that it was because the rules of "joint office hours" meant they had to both be present. It was a weak excuse, and he knew it.

Why did he need an excuse to sit with Lorne?

He was the military commander. He could sit next to Lorne's bed if he wanted to.

There had been no shortage of volunteers for that task over the weeks, mostly from Lorne's extended team. Ronon had camped out as well on occasion, having been forced to spend a good few days in the infirmary himself because of the control console shards which had impaled his leg and hip. Rodney had surprised everyone by taking time out of his "very busy repairs schedule" to sit with Lorne as well. When Sheppard teased him about it, Rodney had said a great amount whilst saying nothing at all, waved his hands about, weakly insulted Sheppard's parentage, and then stormed off back to his lab. He had returned at his next scheduled bedside shift and had shoved a tablet into Sheppard's hands.

It was a copy of McKay's after-action report.

Because of his lack of awareness during the events in question, his report amounted to an entire five lines that were strangely reminiscent of Ronon's style of writing: ' _When the alarms went off I was in Corridor Alpha-16-C en-route to my lab. I entered the lab and immediately began engaging security protocols in response to the city alarm. I turned around and there was a suited figure who shot me with a stunner. I woke up in the infirmary with hypothermia to find out that Colonel Sheppard had confiscated my guns. Here's what I didn't see_.' followed by a link to a video attachment.

It was unlike McKay to not expound on his experience, and it shouldn't have taken him so long to write five lines. The video was clearly meant to be the main feature, and so Sheppard had queued it up immediately.

McKay had managed to cobble together video surveillance footage from various sources around the city. It captured the alien vessel apparating just beyond the shield, coming in to dock at the base of the central cluster, as well as exterior shots of the automated drones strafing the city. It also included footage of McKay being dragged out of his lab and off to the alien ship, the ship's departure and subsequent crash, and the rescue out of the water. Sheppard had been hugely impressed by the compilation.

The only camera that had been pointing out to sea beyond the East Pier was a somewhat grainy personal webcam that one of the meteorologists was using for wide-sky weather studies. If you looked really hard at the lower right corner of the frame you could see the flashes from Ronon's gun when Lorne fired at the vessel, and the explosion from the grenades was visible as well. The explosion of the engines was hard to miss. Sheppard had forwarded the footage to the entire senior command staff. In less than an hour, it had made its way onto the Atlantis general server and pretty much everyone had seen it.

There was a tiny black dot that Radek claimed was Lorne, jumping off the rear of the ship before it hit the water. The velocity and height were insane, and Radek couldn't fathom how Lorne was even alive. McKay, just to be contrary, disputed Zelenka's preposterous jump theory, insisting that Lorne would have held onto the spaceship for dear life, like a sane person. (Chuck had immediately started up a betting pool which would be settled when Lorne woke up and told his story.)

Later, a minuscule black blob moved up the side of the alien vessel and disappeared into the gaping grenade hole. The ship sank, the Jumper could be seen diving down, and then the video cut to a later timestamp where the Jumper could be seen coming back up for the rescue. Sheppard didn't tease McKay again. He had watched Lorne jump off the pier onto the alien vessel. He didn't need the video footage to prove to him what Lorne had gone through to save McKay's life.

Sheppard had arrived in the infirmary one day just as Ronon was getting ready to head back to his own bed and overheard the crutch-wielding Satedan informing the unconscious Lorne that he 'did real good'. Ronon hadn't hesitated to hand off his most precious possession to Lorne, and that alone made Sheppard realise just how deeply ingrained in Atlantis his unflappable XO had become. That level of trust was hard-earned. Sure, Ronon was relieved to have his gun back, but Sheppard thinks he would probably give it up again in a heartbeat if it meant they would have Lorne healthy and whole instead. Lorne could probably even have come back without it; Ronon would have forgiven him. Eventually.

Instead, Lorne had insanely and single-handedly taken down the enemy spaceship, rescued McKay, and managed to acquire a stash of very nice weaponry that everyone in Atlantis, especially Sheppard, had been coveting since the day they first met Ronon. Even Sheppard had been surprised by himself when, instead of laying claim to one of the weapons, he had informed Woolsey that they all belonged to Lorne, and it would be up to his XO to decide what would happen to the guns and power cells when he woke up.

As he settled himself into the plastic chair next to the Major's bed, he thought of some paperwork he could definitely do in the meantime. Something that was way, way overdue. He nodded at Reed who was officially on bedside duty, camped out on the other side of the Major. Reed waved his book at Sheppard and carried on reading. Sheppard looked at his comatose XO one more time before hunkering down and happily, for once, getting to work on his tablet. They had the big-picture facts, the reports from everyone present in the control room, from the rescue jumper, the infirmary, and the video as evidence of the Major's actions. It was enough. It was more than enough. It was about damn time, too.

For now, only Lorne knew what had happened inside the alien ship.

If only he would wake up and tell them.


	13. Relief

_Previously: "Lorne's Leap" is the most-downloaded video on the Atlantis servers.  
Now: I've finiiiiiiished myyyyy naaaaap! Maybe. Not quite. I think I'll have another.  
_

 _This is the last chapter in "Leap of Faith" and it's massive. I thought about breaking it down into two chapters, but I think the time has come to wrap this all up - thank you to everyone who has joined me on this little adventure! I hope you all enjoyed it. My thanks again to my beta, Redtail53, who encourages me to write and write some more! A special shout-out to Sig, who has to deal with my Stargate Atlantis obsession on an almost-daily basis, for indulging my blatant love for these fictional characters.  
_

* * *

A rhythmic beeping penetrated the cold, dull fog in which Lorne was floating. It was annoying, and he strained to work out where it was coming from so that he could make it go away. Instead, it just got louder and louder, and the grey haze that was clouding Lorne's thought processes began to dissipate more rapidly.

Bright light assaulted his eyes when he tried to open them, and he groaned and shut them again. A gasp and a thud off to his right cut through his skull, loudly and painfully. A second later he re-evaluated his definition of loud and painful when a voice hollered something about a doctor. No, for a doctor. Infirmary, clearly.

Grimacing against the pain he felt hands on his face, and the soft familiar brogue of one Carson Beckett encouraging him to open his eyes. He tried, but it was too bright, and he cracked open dry lips and a parched mouth in an attempt to say so.

Cool ice chips made their way into his mouth, and he sucked them in gratefully. There were footsteps, and the unmistakable voice of his CO filled the room. It was less loud and painful than before, but it was obviously still enough to make him pull a face because the voices immediately dropped to a much more comfortable level.

He hadn't caught any of what they were saying, though. As soon as the pain from the loudness and the brightness faded, it was replaced by an all-pervasive ache that was his whole body. Well, his right leg seemed fine, but his left leg and his entire upper body slowly began to burn as his mind became aware of the state he was in.

That state was pure pain.

Lorne reflexively squirmed and tensed in an attempt to get away from his body and away from the pain that it was made of. Beckett's calm brogue picked up, uttering more words that Lorne couldn't make out, and then there were hands holding him down.

Their touch set his skin on fire, and the loud beeping went berserk, joined by a screeching alarm of some sort. He peered out through the tiny fraction that he had been able to open his eyes, fighting against the brightness and the loudness and the pain. Everything was blurry, and there were suddenly lots of shapes around him, dark shadows leaning over him, touching him, blocking out the light but making him burn where their hands strafed across his body.

More voices, words he couldn't comprehend, spoken too fast and too loudly, and the pain kept growing and growing until he couldn't stand it and had to squeeze his eyes shut against it. He couldn't get away, he couldn't move…

And then there was coldness and relief, shooting through his body from the inside out, melting away the fire and the pain and the impulse to escape, to move. The hurt turned to ice, cooling him as it spread, and Lorne felt like he was floating. Floating in the coolness. It brought with it a very strong sense of deja vu, but Lorne didn't have the time to comprehend the relevance. Dimly he realised that the screeching alarm had disappeared, and the beeping was fading away as fast as his consciousness was.

As he slipped back into the welcoming darkness, his mind registered one last coherent thought: Pain meant he was alive.

He was alive.

And then he slept again.

~o~o~o~

Next to his XO's bed, Sheppard breathed a sigh of relief as Lorne slumped back into unconsciousness. Beckett had warned them that Lorne's first return to consciousness would likely not be pleasant and that he might be rather incoherent, but the level of pain that Lorne had clearly been in had quickly shattered Sheppard's excitement at hearing about his waking.

Beckett carefully checked all the Major's various sutures and IVs and medical accoutrements. Seemingly satisfied that none of them had been ripped out, he turned to the computer situated above the Major's head and called up the brain activity monitor. It had far higher levels and a lot more green than it had in several days, and Beckett turned back to Sheppard with a happy grin.

"He's gonna be all right, Colonel. Brain function is back tae normal, he's just asleep. There's a risk of memory loss, of course, with the oxygen deprivation, but fer now the readings look good. Doesn't look like there was any permanent damage. He's got a ways tae go still with the physical recovery, especially with 'aving fractured his left leg yet again, but we won't be sendin' 'im back to Earth anytime soon, I dinnae think. That shot'll keep 'im down for a good few hours, still. We'll know more when he comes around again."

The knot that had been sitting inside his stomach from the moment the city alarm had gone off two weeks before unravelled as Beckett spoke and Sheppard couldn't help but grin back at him. The Doc headed off back to his office, and Sheppard retrieved one of the plastic chairs from the corner where it had been discarded to during the medical intervention. He sat down and propped his feet up against the railing of Lorne's bed, content to wait a while longer even though his XO was likely to sleep for many hours still. Maybe he stood a chance of getting his hands on one of those Particle Magnums after all.

It was going to take some time, but Lorne was going to be okay.

That was all that mattered.

~o~o~o~

Lorne floated. It was great. Just great. He felt great.

"That's... great."

Something poked his arm, and he rolled his head to the left to investigate. The world shifted in a happy smear of pretty colours as he did so, and he grinned. It wasn't the drugs, it was the crystal pendant someone had hung in the window at the far side of the ward. The late afternoon sun was causing it to spread a gorgeous wavering spectrum across the wall and ceiling near his bed. It broke up the rather monotonous metallic colouring of the infirmary. Also, he was on the good drugs, so he was probably appreciating the colourful smear more than he normally would have.

It was pretty though.

His eyes came to rest on his CO's face. Sheppard was camped out next to his bed, holding a tablet and grinning at him. Lorne wasn't sure why.

"Yeah, very pretty, Major, and I already told you, I need to know what happened on the ship." Sheppard's tone was wry. He looked like he was in desperate need of sleep.

"I have work to do Major. I'll sleep later... After you tell me what happened on the ship." Sheppard looked amused.

Wait. Was Sheppard reading his mind? The Colonel's face scrunched up in annoyance.

"If only I could," Sheppard muttered.

Why did Sheppard look so grumpy?

"Lorne."

Lorne blinked at Sheppard, who was clearly waiting for him to say something. Something... what? Lorne didn't know, so he fell back on the familiar.

"Sir?"

"The ship, Major. I need you to tell me about the ship." Sheppard's tone was calm and patient and placating. He had clearly learnt a thing or two from Teyla. She was a good influence on him. Lorne had known that she would be. She was awesome like that. But Teyla wasn't there right now. Was she? Lorne tilted his head the other way, ignoring the very pretty wash of colours as he looked to see if Teyla was there.

"Teyla's not here right now Major, but I'll be sure to let her know that you were... asking... about her." Sheppard's tone was back to wry. Lorne's head flopped back to look at the Colonel again.

Seriously. Sheppard had to be reading his mind. That was so weird. Well, just a little. It would be totally cool. And a very useful skill. They would be able to figure out who kept filching supplies from the kitchen. Lorne hadn't been able to bake his usual batch of mint fudge cookies the previous week because of the shortage. He would need to talk to Radek about installing some discreet security cameras in the kitchens and the storerooms. Maybe the cold store too. They'd need a special camera for that. Dr Hedding worked with low-temperature experiments, he would be able to help recommend a camera that would function well in the cold envir...

"It wasn't anybody." Sheppard's voice interrupted his train of thought about.. erm.. something cold.

Lorne blinked at him, confused.

"What's not anybody, sir?"

~o~o~o~

Sheppard flopped back in his chair, and dropped the tablet on the table next to him, giving up on getting anything useful out of Lorne for now. The Major was so high on painkillers he might as well be floating in a Puddlejumper in geosynchronous orbit. Mint-fudge cookies, indeed.

After Lorne's first waking and Carson's assurances that Lorne was actually going to be mostly okay, Sheppard and everyone had breathed a sigh of relief. The SGC had been pushing for them to send Lorne back via the Stargate at the next scheduled dial-out instead of waiting for the Daedalus. Lorne had woken up just hours before the dial-out, and Sheppard had ditched the transfer paperwork he was grudgingly filling out in favour of rushing to the infirmary to see Lorne for himself.

The entire control room staff had been smiling when Mr Woolsey informed the SGC that the Major had woken up and would not be returning to Earth.

The bedside watch had only slightly scaled back when it became clear that Lorne was officially out of danger. The night shifts had been cancelled, although the night time security patrols had unofficially altered their patrol routes to take a squad through the infirmary and past the Major's bed at least twice an hour. Sheppard knew, but he didn't say anything or try to put a stop to it. As long as the guys were doing their jobs, which they were, he wasn't going to tell them that they couldn't check in on their favourite Major.

Of course, it had been Murphy's Law that the second time Lorne woke up would be exactly when there wasn't anybody next to his bed.

Carson had reduced the pain meds to a low enough dose that Lorne wouldn't just pass out again, but enough to take the edge off what would otherwise be an unpleasant wake-up.

He should have given the Major less.

Lorne had woken up, alone, medicated, and more than a little confused. He had apparently climbed out of bed, unaware of his injuries, and had promptly keeled over when he tried to put weight on his fractured leg, causing a hefty ruckus when he took a nearby cart down with him. The noise and the associating yelling had brought half the infirmary running.

Lorne had managed to break his left arm in the tumble.

So, here they were, Lorne sporting a brand new cast on top of his collection of previous injuries, and even more jacked up on the same thing that had caused the problem to begin with while Sheppard tried in vain to get anything useful out of his XO. Carson had laughed at his ambition. Now he understood why. Lorne was utterly stoned, was talking without realising it, and apparently had a little bit of a thing for Teyla.

Then again, who didn't?

At the very least, this could be entertaining. Lorne was still looking at him in confusion, so he decided to indulge the man.

"The kitchen supplies thief. It wasn't anybody. Turns out one of Dr Lessik's Spider-Rat-Monkey things had more babies than we thought, and a handful of them made it into the ventilation system. They've been raiding the storerooms for anything not nailed down. Radek had already set up the cameras, and once we knew what we were dealing with we just selectively blocked off the vents, flushed them out and returned them to the Xeno-Zoology labs."

Lorne blinked again, muttered "Spideratonkeys", and then returned to staring at the ceiling.

There was quiet for a while as Lorne silently contemplated the colourful patterns. Sheppard just waited. It was different to be waiting, sitting still, keeping calm, when Lorne was lying right there, safe and mostly-sound. The fractures were healing well, and the stitches and staples from both surgeries had already been removed. Lorne still had a cast on his left leg, and his ribs were still strapped, but the violent swath of bruises he had been pulled out of the water with had faded to barely visible discolourations. The small cut on his right temple was no more than a pinkish stripe, fading quickly. It would be practically invisible in no time at all. The more he talked, though, the more they learnt about his mental state and his memory.

"How long have I been asleep, sir?" Lorne's question was remarkably lucid and insightful, given how jazzed Sheppard knew he was.

"Two weeks, lazy bones." Sheppard grinned. He had no doubt that Lorne would have taken care of the Spideratonkeys (damn, now he was going to have to call them that) situation before he would even have heard about it, if Lorne hadn't ended up jumping onto a moving alien ship to rescue McKay and ended up in a coma for 2 weeks. The KP crew had come to him with the matter when they realised that Lorne was out for the count and so Sheppard had dealt with it with some assistance from people who hadn't been furiously working on city repairs.

Lorne hummed in response.

There was silence again, and Sheppard found himself staring at the twinkling rainbow of colours on the ceiling as well. It was pretty, so he relaxed into the chair and watched as the rainbow slid further and further up the wall, stretching out as the sun sank lower onto the horizon, altering the light's angle of incidence. He wasn't going anywhere for another hour yet, at which point Casey Cartwright was scheduled to relieve him. Lorne was back to having a full-time bedside attendant until he came off the meds completely and showed more full-time lucidity. They didn't want him to try wandering off again in a stoned haze. There were only so many limbs left to break.

"Is Dr McKay alright?"

The quiet question had Sheppard glancing back at Lorne in surprise. It had been so peaceful for the past 15 minutes that he had assumed that Lorne had fallen asleep again, but his XO was blinking at him with slightly glazed and bleary eyes.

"Yeah," he answered immediately. "He's totally fine. Back at work, terrorizing his minions and solving the mysteries of the universe. You know McKay."

Lorne gave him a tired grin at that. Relief flooded through Sheppard.

Lorne remembered.

It had taken a bit of time, but the man was doped up on pain meds. Still, he had remembered something, enough to ask after McKay's wellbeing. Sheppard watched as Lorne's eyes slid closed and his breathing evened out. Sheppard picked up his tablet again and got back to his paperwork.

They would get their answers, eventually. Sheppard could wait. Maybe he would get mint-fudge cookies, too. And a Particle Magnum.

For now, though, Lorne deserved to sleep.

* * *

 _That's it! We're done :)  
This site doesn't allow the posting of images (or links!), and the built-in story icon is just so tiny, so instead of a 14th chapter, if you would like to see Lorne wielding Ronon's gun, please go check out the cover art for this story at: bit dot ly slash LOF-Lorne or head on over to AO3, search for me under the same username and you can see the image embedded under the 14th Chapter there. Thanks again!_


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